“Passing Time, Changing Lives”

End-of-Year Ruminations with Looks Forward and Back

By Three Contributors from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

December 31, 2006

 

 

“Looking Forward,” by Haley Dreis

Because the theme of our service today is "Looking Forward, Looking Back," I thought I would take a moment to look forward. Here is an excerpt from a book entitled Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change, by Steve Donahue. He traveled across the Sahara Desert and has compared his journey to life’s changes:

Life, especially during a time of change, is like crossing the Sahara. The journey seems endless; we get lost, we get stuck, and we chase mirages.

While crossing the Sahara, it’s difficult to tell when you’ve arrived at the other side. Much of life is like that. You can’t see your goal. You can’t tell when you’ve arrived. What is the goal of life itself?

Being a parent is like crossing the Sahara. How do you know when you’re done raising your children? When they move out? When they get married? When they stop borrowing money? When they forgive you for being imperfect? Parenting is endless. And while it is for many of us the most rewarding experience of our lives, there is no mountaintop, no summit we can look down from and say, "I’ve made it. My job of parenting is over."

The never-ending, never-arriving aspect of life can frustrate us because our dominant culture metaphor is more about climbing mountains. We live in a goal-oriented, achievement-focused, results-driven culture. Defining problems, setting targets, and implementing plans are seen as the solutions to any and all of our challenges. This is a mountain-climbing ethos.

Mountain climbers can see their goal. The peak is visible. It inspires and guides them to the top. If you reach the summit, there’s little doubt about your achievement – you know when you’ve made it. Mountain climbing is about the destination.

However, if your goal is vague, is difficult to describe, or sounds more like a way of being than an end result, you are crossing a desert. Think of marriage. Couples never say, "Let’s get married and see if we can reach the 50-year end mark." People marry to be happy, to support one another, to have a family, and to share life together.

Deserts are about journey. So marriage is a desert. Deserts seem endless, or at least it’s very difficult to predict how long it will take to cross them. Mountain-climbing techniques don’t work in the desert.

I feel that this excerpt fully applies to anyone and everyone. But I also feel it is especially pertinent to those of us who are young adults, growing up and changing: moving through high school, moving away, going to college, or starting careers as doctors, lawyers, artists, environmentalists, or owners of Starbucks drive-thrus, and beginning new points in our lives.

As the excerpt describes, we have mountains we will tackle by using focused and defined solutions – where we have a goal and we know where we’re going. For those of us going to college, we expect when we’re going to graduate and finish our education. But what we don’t realize is that we will continue learning all our lives; there is no end result and we can’t predict where we will end up with that. It is a journey – and like a desert, it is a scary one.

For some of us, we will be ready to leave our parents with the "empty nest" syndrome – and some parents will be celebrating our departure. And we are also expected to be on our own and become adults. But the truth is that we don’t have to do this on our own, and our new beginnings open doors for new and exciting things to come.

Donahue finishes the book with this:

When we approach life as curious travelers, both the mundane and the difficult episodes of our itinerary offer opportunities to discover more about who we are and why we are here.

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Haley Dreis is a high school senior studying with violin professor Joseph Genualdi at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Her orchestral experience includes participation with the NCSA Symphony Orchestra, the Winston-Salem Youth Symphony, and the All-County and All-State Orchestras, and a role as Concertmaster of the Underground Symphony and UNC-G Summer Session Orchestras. She has attended summer festivals at the Brevard Music Center, NCSA, and UNC-G. She is also executive editor of the student newspaper and secretary of the Student Government Association. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“Letter from the Past,” by Molly Spaugh

Hello, my name is Molly Spaugh. I have been coming to this UU Fellowship for about ten years now. That’s about two-thirds of my life, so I have many memories tied to this place.

About a month ago I received an email from Pam Lepley saying that the senior high group would be conducting the service on December 31st. Pam wrote to us asking for volunteers to write part of the sermon, and I jumped at the opportunity to share my thoughts with the congregation. But what to say?

Then, an answer to that question came in an email from Lianne Jackson. She suggested we write letters as if we were the past and the future. We decided who would write as which time. It was a fairly simple decision, and I think we each got what we wanted. Secretly, I wanted the past, perhaps because it is stable and unalterable. We are inspired by the past; our present and future are built upon it.

While my own personal past is young compared to some others, it has been full of surprises, both good and bad. Full of opportunities I never took. Full of things that make me look back and say, "I shouldn’t have done that." Or, "Why didn’t I do that?" Full of things that make me stop and hesitate when I should be moving forward. I spend a lot of time thinking about the past, so I know a few of its secrets. If the past could appear to us and speak, what it would say might go a little something like this:

Dear Friends,

By now, many of you know me very well. I have been with you for as longas you can remember, and longer. Your past makes up only an infinitesimally small part of me, less than a grain of sand in a vast and endless ocean of possibility. Your past is linked to the pasts of everyone who was there with you at certain moments. Considering the number of moments in a day, a week, a year, this means you are linked to millions of others. And each of those people is linked to millions more. By this reasoning, everyone on this planet is linked together, linked to you.

For you see, I am everywhere, carried around by everyone. I am ten years ago, ten weeks ago, ten seconds ago. I am hundreds of trillions of memories, and bits and pieces of those memories are left as reminders of what was. A song playing on the radio reminds you of a certain car trip many summers ago. The scent of vanilla reminds you of a friend now long gone. Perhaps even the feel of cold water takes you back to a lake you frequented as a child.

Whatever the case, I know, because I am there. I am, and will always be, there. I cannot be stuck in the past, for I am the past.

Do not stay behind with me. Remember me, but do not let me keep you from moving forward. Take comfort from me, but also learn from mistakes I keep. I hold the key to the future, and I am thrusting it into your hands, screaming, “Use me; learn from me!” But few ever do. Some of you are so wrapped up in me that you can’t get on with your lives. You keep trying to live in the past, but all you are doing is missing the present; missing the people around you. The coming years are your future, but they will soon become your past. I do not have the good fortune to have a present, nor a future. I am done. I am the doors now closed, the opportunities missed.

Do not dwell on what could have been. Rather, leap forward and make something new. Do not try to stay with me, for what was in the past can sometimes never be again. And all you are doing is clutching at what seems to have never been there. Think of me too much, and you might be able to trick yourself into believing something that never was. You end up hurting yourself, and those around you. Who you were stays with me, but who you can be lies in the present, and the future. Your past may determine some of who you are now, for the past can never be entirely erased. But it’s only in the present that you can determine who you will be, what you will do.

Today, as the dying flame of this year gives birth to the flame of a new year, take a chance. Dive into the vast unknown of the future, and grab the opportunities as they come. Today is yesterday’s tomorrow, and I am yesterday.

Yours Truly,

The Past

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Molly Spaugh is 14 years old and attends Reynolds High School, where she is a member of the poetry and film societies. Her favorite subject is English, and in her spare time she enjoys writing and listening to music.

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“Letter from the Future,” by Lianne Jackson

As I sat at my computer, wondering what on earth I was going to say to you about the future or the past, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to let the future and past speak for themselves. So Molly and I decided to write letters, she doing the past (as you’ve heard) and I doing the future.

What would The Future say, I wondered. Would it mess with my head and tell me. "You’re going to regret that" after I’ve made a choice, and then say "just kidding!" and laugh? Would it warn me that I have a week to live? Would it warn me that I have a week to live and then say "just kidding!" and laugh? Is The Future a jerk? Or is The Future a nice guy? Is it depressed or content? Is it conceited?

Well, I have no idea. The Future never answered my emails. I guess it had plans. Anyway, here is the best guess of a humble human as to what The Future might say.

Dear People,

I am bigger than you. I am bodiless and boundless. I am vast, and yet one worries that I may drop off suddenly. And then where will you be, you wonder?

One thing you must understand is that you cannot live in me. I don’t exist yet. You must see that the only thing you have, without a doubt, is this moment, this breath, this heartbeat. I am always a step ahead. If you are chasing me, you won’t catch up. If you are constantly waiting for me to arrive, you will miss it when what you’ve been waiting for steps into the resent. Some people’s lives are sliding through their hands, but they don’t realize it because they are too farsighted to be able to look down.

Place neither all of your hope nor all of your despair in me. You don’t know what I am. Don’t pretend you do. Have hope, know despair, but never expect me to prolong your conditions forever. Nothing is forever. And that is why your life is precious.

I may be bright, and I may be dark. I may be surprising, disappointing, mediocre, or heavenly. Do what you can to mold me, but know that some things are out of your hands. Do not wait for me to happen, nor try to force me into being. I am always on the horizon, never here. Do not live like I do. Plant your feet firmly on the ground and look around at this earth. Do as Emily Webb said, in Our Town, and "look at one another."

I am not a promise. I am not a guarantee. I am a possibility. I am a potential. And so are you. But you cannot successfully live as something that will be, because inherently you are something that is.

I am bigger than you, but you are not helpless. You are creating, avoiding, choosing stepping-stones to walk on that will lead you in my various directions. You are taking the yarn that I hand you and spinning it as best you can, despite the obstacles I may offer. I am bigger, but not better. And I never win, because I never reach the end. You have a chance to accomplish something, if you can only look down at your hands once in a while and catch life as it slides through your fingers.

Sincerely,

The Future

p.s. You’re going to regret what you did last night. (Just kidding.)

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Lianne Jackson is a senior at Mount Tabor High School, where she is co-captain of the improv troupe known as SPOTS, the vice-president of Thespians, an occasional guest columnist for the school paper, and the winner of the Salem Academy monologue competition. She puts writing as "by far" her favorite activity, with theater a close second.

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